A thoroughly enjoyable read. You really heard the different authors take on Marple, while still retaining the essence of Christie. Wonderful.

I loved the concept of this book that it was 12 short stories by 12 great authors all based upon Miss Marple! I'm a huge fan of miss marple from the books to the TV shows.

Miss Marple's quirkiness is back with these 12 interesting short stories that give us readers a chance to see Miss Marple in action in a wider range of murderous situations all over the world. Prepare to be invited to a peculiar wedding, to go on a cruise ship filled with superstition, and many more adventures. Like any short story collection this one has ups and downs too but each and every story offers a unique interpretation of the quirky character while also staying true to its nature. All in all a highly recommended read for Agatha Christie fans.

I’m a huge fan of Agatha Christie though I haven’t read much Marple previously. I loved this collection of short stories. Some were stronger than others but it was wonderful to be back in the world of Marple! Stand out stories were those from Lucy Foley & Natalie Haynes though I enjoyed them all!

Thanks @netgalley for the opportunity to preview!

Who doesn’t love a bit of Miss Jane Marple?!?

A cosy night reading suspense, intrigue and the psychologically indomitable Miss Marple.
I enjoyed the stories and they are cleverly structured to encompass the crime and the reveal in so few pages. I love the village locations with all of its typical Britishness of stiff upper lip and gossiping over tea, so New York Miss Marple was a surprise.

It strikes me that we who love Agatha Christie’s work potentially all have our own opinions and ideas about her characters and how they would have revealed more of themselves in further exploits.

Each of the authors here, each incredible in their own right, would seem to have their own interpretations laid bare on the page, and whilst the stories are clever and page turning and unique I couldn’t quite find my own version of Miss Marple.

I enjoyed this overall. Some of the stories were better (or I should say more to my taste) than others but each was interesting and all were short.
It was really interesting to see how 12 different authors tackled the same task of creating an Agatha Christie-esque Miss Marple story and came up with a rich, diverse response!
I enjoyed the short story format for a change from the usual.
Many thanks for the ARC.

Wonderfully entertaining, 12 bestselling crime writers get to have fun writing stories in the voice of one of the most famous of Agatha Christie's creation, Miss Jane Marple. I really enjoyed this, easy to pick up and read as individual stories or to devour in one sitting such are the subtle differences between the various writers. Highly recommended for all Agatha Christie fans.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Simiilarly to reading Sophie Hannah's Poirot books, when you have already read all the current Marple's I was intrigued and excited about a new version and the short story idea was particularly appealing. Some of these were better (perhaps really meaning closer to the original) than others, seeming more Marple-esque but all were an interesting mystery in their own way.

As a devoted Christie fan, I was eager to read this new collection Marple of stories but unsure whether I would enjoy them as much as the originals. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I did. The gang at Harper Collins have done a great job, choosing just the right 12 authors. Each one manages to capture the essence of a good Marple story, whether it be that warm cosy feeling that we associate with the originals, or the description of an apparently harmless old lady with a mind as sharp as a needle, it's all there. At the same time, the stories and their settings are all very different and all the more enjoyable for it. I would heartily recommend these stories to any Christie fan and to any lover of well-written crime novel.

A brilliant collection of stories.

I am a big Agatha Christie fan and was intrigued if all these authors could pull off (to my taste) Jane Marple. There are a few that really did that for me and I loved them and most of the others were just about there. A couple of them for me missed the mark, but I will let you decide for yourselves which ones you think did or did not pass the test.

One of the stories stood out above all else for me, with the beautiful descriptions which really took me away with them. Another stood out for the language which felt so close to that of Jane Marple. There was one story where a phrase felt off for it to be said by Miss Marple, and it did slightly annoy me. The stories however are allowed to cover the period from the 1930s to the 1970s so there is a difference in language depending on when each story is set.

The commonalty all the stories have is that they are wonderful mysteries. Even if you don't like or have never read Miss Marple stories, give these a go, as you will be missing out if you like a mystery.

I'm not the biggest fan of short stories, but these had me enthralled and I will be reading them again.

Highly recommend for fans of Christie, more specifically Miss Marple.

Each of the stories strikes a perfect note and captures the essence of Marple perfectly. Characters, setting, plots are all intelligently crafted and in-keeping with the original work.

You can tell that each of the specially selected authors are fans of Agatha Christie, and Miss Marple, and are in their element to contribute to this new body of work.

Whilst I very much enjoy stories featuring Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, I have to admit that my personal favourites of her books are those in which English spinster Miss Jane Marple tales the starring role.

White-haired and usually to be found in the vicinity of a ball of wool and a pair of knitting needles, Miss Marple is, on the surface, the quintessential English grandmother. Yet as Mrs Dane Calthrop says in The Moving Finger, Miss Marple “knows more about the different kinds of human wickedness than anyone I’ve ever known”.

As a Miss Marple fan, it’s been an absolute delight to read twelve new stories featuring Christie’s much-loved detective, all of which breathe new life into an old favourite. From Lucy Foley’s ‘Evil in Small Places’, which sees Miss Marple in classic English country village territory to solve the murder of a choir mistress, to Alyssa Cole’s ‘Miss Marple Takes Manhattan’, which involves a theatrical murder during her nephew Raymond West’s first US theatre production, the twelve contemporary writers who have contributed to Marple: Twelve New Stories have done a fantastic job of paying homage to their source material without falling into pastiche or attempting emulation.

Joining Foley and Cole in paying tribute to Miss Marple are Val McDermid, Natalie Haynes, Ruth Ware, Naomi Alderman, Jean Kwok, Dreda Say Mitchell, Elly Griffiths, Karen M McManus, Kate Moss and Leigh Bardugo. Each brings their own unique style to Miss Marple’s adventures, with Karen M McManus using her YA background to excellent effect when she introduces us to Raymond’s granddaughter, Nicola West, and Elly Griffiths offering a spirited riff on the problem of crime-writers block in her tale, ‘Murder at the Villa Rosa’.

Fans of Miss Marple’s previous adventures will also be delighted to find returning other returning characters. In addition to Miss Marple’s nephew and his wife Jean, Miss Bella from A Caribbean Mystery acts as co-detective in Dreda Say Mitchell’s ‘A Deadly Wedding Day’, whilst Dolly Bantry makes an appearance in both Ruth Ware’s ‘Miss Marple’s Christmas’ and Leigh Bardugo’s ‘The Disappearance’. Miss Marple’s live-in companion Cherry also features in several of the stories, as does retired Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Henry Clithering.

Several of the stories see Miss Marple confronting the changing post-war world, with Kate Mosse’s ‘The Mystery of the Acid Soil’ one of several stories that gently confront the challenges of aging and find our heroine and her friend reflecting on earlier times. Contemporary concerns are also addressed, with Naomi Alderman’s ‘The Open Mind’ featuring a #MeToo-style scenario in an Oxford college (and doing a wonderful job of sending up academic pomposity in the process) and Jean Kwok’s ‘The Jade Empress’ confronting racial prejudice on board a luxury cruise liner bound for Hong Kong. Natalie Haynes’s ‘The Unravelling’, meanwhile, is one of several stories to gently examine the after-effects of war upon the Home Front.

As with most short story collections, I felt some stories were more successful than others, both in terms of capturing Miss Marple’s unique character and in providing a satisfyingly realised mystery within a relatively short space. Val McDermid’s ‘The Second Murder at the Vicarage’ is, as the title might suggest, probably the most classically Marple of the stories featured but I admired the way that writers utilising very different settings and styles managed to convey Christie’s spark – and Miss Marple’s unique appeal – whilst retaining their own unique voices.

Fans of Miss Marple are sure to be delighted to have twelve new stories featuring the sharp-eyed spinster to enjoy whilst, for those new to the character, it is to be hoped that this might act as an introduction to Christie’s lesser-known – but no less ingenious – sleuth.

3.5 stars. As soon as I saw the list of authors contributing to this I knew I had to request it and it didn’t disappoint! I’ve read and enjoyed a few Christies but I’ve never read a Marple story before - this has definitely inspired me to explore the series.

I was dubious as to how a murder mystery could play out convincingly in so few pages - giving us the clues we need without giving everything away too easily. Some authors were definitely more successful with this than others and I particularly enjoyed The Unravelling and The Jade Empress. What impressed me with the collection as a whole was the strong sense of Marple’s character which ran through all of the stories, even though they were all written by different people. I think I would have got more out of it if I’d read the original Marple stories beforehand, but it was still an entertaining read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the very first book of short stories I’ve ever enjoyed reading . The quality of writing speaks for itself when you see the list of writers and yet you’re thoroughly and totally transported to life and times of Agatha Christie. The voice of Miss Marple is recognisable in each of the twelve iterations but equally different from each other and these incredible writers do justice to the esteemed writer who created the original.
As a synopsis it’s hard to distinguish which was better or more enjoyable as they all offered something different. My favourite was Val McDermid’s The Second Murder at the Vicarage just because I loved the first Murder at the Vicarage and this was the voice of the Vicar telling us the tale.
Cannot recommend this novel enough, I’m a short story convert thoroughly enjoye each and every tale.

What a great anthology to learn about Miss marble and delve into her world of solving crime.
This is my first time reading Marple stories and I rather loved the character. She puts the queen in my mind at times but I could imagine a prim and proper Miss Jane Marple observing everything and everyone with her keen eyes.

Each story was good. My favorites were ‘Miss Marple’s Christmas’ and a ‘The murdering sort’

I am horrified to admit that I actually have never read an Agatha Christie book!! I have fond memories though of watching the series as a child.
I wasn’t sure how 12 different authors and twelve different stories would work, the genius however, is that they do so brilliantly. I wish I knew the process used in curating stories that fit so well together, but thoroughly enjoyed reading Miss Marples exciting life

This collection of short stories is INCREDIBLE! I love that so many voices of today have taken their hand to creating a story woven around the infamous Miss Marple. Some made me laugh, others had me feeling emotional, but all of them captured that warmth and charisma that is always so prolific in an Agatha Christie piece. This is a charming ode to a literary classic

Having read all of Agatha Christie’s works last year, it is fair the say that I am a fan of her work. When I first heard about this, it was fair to say that I was bubbling with excitement! Having now read the stories, I wanted to share my thoughts and feeling with you. I want to start off by saying that all of these authors did an amazing job at continuing Christie’s work and did not stray too far from her original work while still adding new things and pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable for a Christie story.
Each story was filled with small gestures and nods to the original cannon which I did love, but sometimes felt that somethings were nodded to too many times for one collection, and a little more coordination between the authors wouldn’t have gone amiss. Most of the issues I had with his book was how it formed as a collection as opposed to each story in turn. Some talks worked wonderfully as little stand-alone pieces, whereas some I think could have been fleshed out into full stand-alone novels, still keeping in Christie’s style. One thing I did think that was lacking however was the sense of unity in this collection. There was nothing particularly binding these tales together in a way I seem to recall their being in Christie’s own short story collections. Sometimes it was just that the events happened sequentially or one linked to another in some small way, but given the collaborative nature of this project, and the freedom given to each writer in producing their own work, this was not present in this book.
I really appreciated the added racial diversity in the characters in this book, who were treated with far more respect that Christie treated her non-white characters, and I think it truly showed how great this style of cosy mystery can be, if we let go of this false notion of social homogeneity that persist in many people’s minds. To this end, my favourite of the books was “A Deadly Wedding Day” by Dreda Say Mitchell, with the brilliant Miss Bella – a Caribbean version of Miss Marple, for want of a better brief summary- was a truly wonderful partnership. I now would love to read a whole series of Miss Bella’s adventures on St Honoré. I can’t imagine Christie ever writing something like that, but it fits so wonderfully in the world and existing cannon, that the idea that it shouldn’t exist now seems completely absurd. Furthermore, despite being set in the 1960s, it reads more like one of Christie’s earlier works, and I think is more faithful to the public image of a Christie story than her own writing of that time.
I would also like to talk about two other stories, but along the same theme. “Miss Marple takes Manhattan” by Alyssa Cole and “The Jade Empress” by Jean Kwok and both wonderful mysteries but I think Miss Marple is the wrong detective for them. A large part of Miss Marple’s character comes form her only being able to travel on other people’s expenses as she cannot afford to do so herself. This is why her trips in “At Bertram’s Hotel”, “A Caribbean Mystery” and “Nemesis” are so important to her. However having her now also gone to Manhattan and Hong Kong, I think takes away from the importance she places on these trips. I think the more times Miss Marple is taken from small English villages, to have experiences in other settings, the less her claims to know nothing of large towns and cities and just be familiar with village life seem credible. Instead I think it would have been better for Tommy and Tuppence to go to Manhattan and Poirot to go to Hong Kong. These detectives – to my mind at least- feel like they might naturally be in these places ready for the mysteries to unfold in a way the Miss Marple feels a little out of sorts. However, these stories are still a great read and live up to Christie’s legacy.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed these stories and will be reading more books by these authors in the future. I recommend this book whole heartedly to anyone who enjoys cosy mysteries and Agatha Christie’s work.

This is my first time reading Miss Marple by Agatha Christie. I had my fingers crossed right from the day I requested the book. Each story is written by a renowned author. All the stories are short and simple. Not entirely tricky ones in comparison to Agatha Christie. All the authors have justified with the plot and given Miss Marple an interesting characterization. I really enjoyed all the stories. A perfect for readers who want to start reading Agatha Christie. The only thing you cannot expect from the book is action and adventure.

Definitely 5 stars to the book. Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for providing me an opportunity to read and review the book.

Marple: Twelve New short Stories by so many authors - Agatha Christie; Naomi Alderman; Leigh Bardugo; Alyssa Cole; Lucy Foley; Elly Griffiths; Natalie Haynes; Jean Kwok; Val McDermid; Karen M. McManus; Dreda Say Mitchell; Kate Mosse; Ruth Ware and I really enjoyed the new take on Miss Jane Marple who was the Queen of Crime. Legendary Detective. These short stories are all well written especially as many features the great characters, Mrs Dolly Bantry, Miss Marple’s famous author nephew Raymond.

This book was a great find and was nice to see so many brilliant authors revamping Agatha Christie's books